All of the talk on the news is about New Orleans, but this hurricane has it's sights set squarely on a little craphole of a place just south and west of New Orleans called Fourchon - or more accurately, Port Fourchon. Because of it's importance to our nations's energy supply, it's almost unbelievable that this area is being overlooked by the news media.
Of the 4,000 or so offshore platforms in the Gulf, there are probably 1,000 of them within 50 or 60 miles of Fourchon. Fourchon services most of the deepwater drilling that goes on in the Gulf of Mexico. And there's only one way to get there - a narrow little two lane road called LA1.
Not only do all of the offshore workers have to travel down this two lane road, but all of the materials to service the deepwater rigs and platforms have to go down it, too. Everything from pipe to groceries goes down this road to eventually make it's way onto a boat to go out to the rigs.
Fourchon is just south of Leeville, Louisiana and you have to go through Leeville to get there. It's really kinda hard to imagine the vulnerability of South Louisiana if you've never been there. This is known as the Leeville bridge and this is what it looks like under under normal conditions:
Although you can barely see it because of the water on each side of it, this is the road that goes on south to the Port of Fourchon. Imagine what a 20 or 30 foot storm surge will do to that road...
Because of the depth of the muck, it takes years and years to build roads and infrastructure in South Louisiana. A storm the size of this one has the capability to just wipe it off of the face of the Earth.
As important as it is to service the rigs and production facilities that are operating in the Gulf, there's an equally important facility just off of Fourchon known as the LOOP - the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port. This is where the big tankers dock - the ones that are too large to get into other inland ports.
Through this port, about 15% of the entire country's imported oil flows into underground storage. From there it flows into underground pipelines that move it on to the refineries along the Gulf Coast that represent about half of this country's refining capacity. Although most of these pipelines are underground and under the Gulf, they are still vulnerable to a storm of this size.
And this storm is headed almost directly for this place that almost nobody has ever heard of - this little place known as Fourchon. This storm is NOT just about New Orleans and it's NOT just about South Louisiana. This storm will affect the entire country.